Witness: Burials Cracked Vaults

March 15, 2002|By Mitch Lipka Consumer Writer

One of every three burials at the Menorah Gardens cemetery in Palm Beach County in the past two years resulted in workers cracking vaults already in the ground, the cemetery's former grounds superintendent told state investigators.

The former superintendent, demoted in January, told investigators with the state Comptroller's Office that his bosses told him to not repair the damage to the graves, because it was becoming too costly.

"Cemetery management told me it was getting too expensive to keep replacing the broken vaults and ordered me to just cover the broken vaults back up," Tom Chaney said in an affidavit that was included in a court filing made by the Attorney General's Office.

The vaults were damaged so often, because so many of the prior burials encroached on adjacent gravesites and weren't exactly where they were supposed to be.

Chaney also said he saw the destruction of Col. Hymen Cohen's grave and saw the decorated veteran's body parts in the bucket of a backhoe.

Allegations about Cohen's remains have been a centerpiece of the civil lawsuit that triggered the current investigations into the cemeteries. Plaintiffs contend Cohen's remains were removed from a gravesite and strewn about a wooded area. The cemetery owner denies any mistreatment.

"I watched [former cemetery worker Jerome] Hippolite dig the grave with the backhoe, and I could smell the odor of the remains," Chaney told investigators. "I saw Mr. Cohen's bones in the bucket of the backhoe and watched Hippolite take them behind the maintenance shed and dump them in a brush pile."

"His description is very much in conflict with other accounts of that event," he said. "The credibility of a witness is a key part of any legal case. There's some real question of the credibility of what he is saying."

Chaney's statement was included in two voluminous reports prepared by the Comptroller's Office on the cemeteries in Broward and Palm Beach counties.

The reports include documentation that plots were double-sold and bodies frequently buried in the wrong places. They contain internal memos showing the company was aware of the problems for years.

`Systemic problems'

"The investigation of the burial records of Menorah Gardens indicated systemic problems with record keeping in the six gardens sampled," the report on the Broward cemetery found.

While noting that many of the problems were inherited in 1995 from the prior owners, including state Rep. Mark Weissman, D-Parkland, the report places the blame on SCI for making a bad situation worse.

"It is also evident to the examiners that SCI recognized the existence of problems as early as calendar year 1996," said the report by area financial manager Sharon Dawes and financial examiner Michael Bittner of the Comptroller's Office.

"Not only did SCI fail to correct the problems, they continued operations knowing that such would only compound the identified problems."

The lawyers who filed the class-action suit received the reports with open arms.

"It's confirming everything we've been saying from the beginning," said Ervin Gonzalez, one of attorneys who filed the class-action suit on Dec. 19.

Among the documents in the reports were details of dead infants being buried in the same graves in the "Babyland" section of the Broward County Menorah Gardens.

"That's just cruel," Gonzalez said. "This is just a powerful example of it [problems at the cemeteries] and so offensive."

Mathis said the report's mention of the Babyland situation is the product of a misunderstanding. The cemetery provides plots for infants almost for free, as a public service, Mathis said, and splitting a grave simply enabled the burial of another baby.

`It wasn't wrong'

"It was portrayed as an issue of doing something wrong intentionally," Mathis said. "It wasn't wrong. It was an issue of trying to help out somebody."

He said other similar misunderstandings would be cleared up as the case proceeds.

Attorney General Bob Butterworth filed suit against SCI two weeks ago, expressing outrage at how the cemeteries were operated and the dead treated. The lawsuit, in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, makes largely the same accusations as the private lawsuit. It asks that a judge appoint an outside party to oversee operations at the cemeteries.

That request was made formally on Wednesday, with the comptroller's investigative reports as supporting documentation.

Mathis said the company has no problem with submitting to oversight.

"We're glad to do it," he said. "For somebody to be there and make comments and suggest things we should do, we more than welcome it. It could be helpful to everyone involved to have an extra set of eyes up there."

Assistant Deputy Attorney General Cecile Dykas said on Thursday that she didn't want to discuss the contents of the reports. "The documents speak for themselves," she said.

SCI loses battle

Also on Thursday, SCI lost a battle to keep sealed pretrial materials in the private lawsuit. The 4th District Court of Appeal upheld Broward County Circuit Judge J. Leonard Fleet's decision to release the documents -- including an another interview with Chaney. Mathis said the company hasn't decided whether to continue the appeal.

If the company doesn't challenge the ruling, the documents and other interviews by lawyers in the class-action lawsuit would be made public within two weeks.

Mitch Lipka can be reached at mlipka@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6653.